Nick Taylor, poetry lecturer, used to be Mick
O’Donnell, British gang leader. In search of a new life he’s come to New York,
and five years later, he’s nearly there. Once he has his citizenship, he can
start again. He’s kept clear of trouble, under the radar except for his visits
to burlesque club Bared, and it’s there he meets his nemesis. Beautiful,
classy, irresistible. Trouble.

Gen has a dead-end job checking citizenship applications but when her boss asks
her to check Nick’s credentials she finds herself doing a lot more than that.
The burlesque club is just the start. Nick is unlike any professor she’s ever
met. They can’t keep their hands off each other, for one thing, even in the
university library. Much less in the all-glass room in his apartment. With the
rest of New York watching. Maybe. Nick teases her with the total exposure she
secretly craves, while always keeping her safe.

But although Nick has left his past behind, he needs to draw on all his
resources when Gen finds herself in deep unexpected and deadly trouble. He has
to reach out to people he wanted to leave behind. It may end his attempt at a
clean start, but if he doesn’t risk all he’s worked for, and perhaps expose
himself to the deadly menace still hunting him down after five years, the woman
he's grown to love and everything he wants to share with her will die.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Chef Remy Girard
shouldn’t be having a hot and spicy affair with irresistible restaurant
critic Elise Mason, but he can’t help himself. She titillates all his
senses, including the one he’d never believed in until now; love.
However, when Elise writes a bad review of his food, he can’t believe
her lies. He does something that could wreck any chance he has at
happiness with the woman he loves.Elise is heartbroken, but she has
to tell the truth. The food was terrible. Then firebrand Remy behaves
like an ass, and she has to stand by her principles however much she
loves him. Any chance at reconciliation and happiness seems hopeless,
unless Remy can swallow his pride and Elise can find it in her to
forgive him.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

I think I should be telling you to go and buy my books and tell all your friends, shouldn’t I? Don’t worry, I won’t! Well, not so blatantly anyway. Though if you like them, do tell people.

The trouble is, the Internet is full of people and organisations and social networks, and if you’re not careful you can get completely taken up by it all. It’s a huge room full of people just chatting, and exchanging views. Sometimes not listening to each other at all!

I enjoy playing, but I also enjoy turning it off sometimes, so I can listen to the voices in my head, the ones I’m creating and working with (I’m not quite nuts enough to think the voices are real people, though at times it’s a close run thing!)

This year I’m starting on a new venture. Self-publishing. I’m not abandoning my publishers, far from it, but I have some books that are lingering in the ether, not being promoted and a bit dated. I’ve asked and received the rights for two of them back, and I’m struggling through the process of putting them up at Amazon and other outlets. It’s fun, but it’s not something I’d like to do for all my books!

However it does give me a chance to give some books a new lease of life, and perhaps publish others that don’t fit anywhere. For instance, I’ve had a new paranormal series sitting on the back burner for a while now. There’s even a completed book. But with Department 57 at Loose-Id and the two paranormal series Pure Wildfire and STORM at Ellora’s Cave, I don’t want to spoil their chances with a new venture there. There’s a new STORM book accepted and ready to be edited (it’ll blow your socks off!) and I’m going to Washington in April to research for a new STORM book, maybe a trilogy if the ideas I have work out.

If I do more self-publishing, I can schedule releases so they don’t conflict with the others. It’s something I’m only thinking about, and if you have any opinion, I’d love to hear it.

Then there’s a paranormal historical that has been out briefly once, before I pulled it back, and a brand new Georgian-set historical series. Not the one I’m currently shopping around the publishers, but the one I’ve had on in planning stages for a while.

It is an exciting and a scary thing, and I’m not rushing into anything.

But if you’d like to pop over to Amazon, the books are there. The Hosts to Ghosts series is already underway with two books, and there are some Regencies there, too, “Vanessa” and “Laura.” “Noblesse Oblige” will follow in time.

Join me in the adventure!

Meantime, “Born on the Bayou” came out and my lovely Jace is now out there. “Nice ‘n’ Easy” is on its way, featuring Donovan the British bass player, and later, you can meet Hunter and his deaf heroine.

This month, February, sees the release of a book several of you wrote to me asking for. If I ever wrote a book by request, including my editor, then this is it.

“Brutally Beautiful” features the gangster brother of the hero of “Stripped Bare,” Mick O’Donnell. Only Mick is now Nick Taylor, living in New York, trying to make a new life for himself. Since it comes out at the end of this month, I’ll give you an excerpt in next month’s newsletter, but you can find an extract and details on my website, if you can’t wait to see what I’ve done with Mick!

In the interim, Jim Goddard, who features briefly in “Brutally Beautiful” has grown up and I’m thinking of telling his story next.